Play the game on the updated website: https://clover1031.itch.io/cakedream

CakeDream is a magical world where the player goes on a journey to make a cake and the choices they make along the way will have consequences. CakeDream presents players with pleasing visuals, story-rich narratives, choices, and riddles that may impact the outcome of their cake creation. 

The background story of CakeDream: CakeDream is actually made for one target audience which is our friend, Trazador. I say “our” because this game-making has another developer which is my friend, Mep. At first, we wanted to make a dating-sim visual novel game to make our friend suffer as his birthday gift. But then, we made a wholesome cute story game instead. I made sure to make the game general enough so anyone can play!

Twine makes storytelling and interacting with the user easier because Twine is pretty beginner friendly. Twine makes coding interactive games much more manageable. With Twine, you’re able to make an interactive game like a flowchart creating many different branches and scenarios. You can add background images, audio, videos, and many different customizations of text being able to change text font, color, and size and you can even animate the text. It’s a great webpage/program to use to make interactive games.

Schedule:

TaskStartEndDuration
Gathering scripts and images in one place. Figuring out what I’m missing in my script before meeting with the advisor. 2/13/20232/13/20231
First meeting (confirming topic & setting boundaries) – did decide to minimize the project.2/14/20232/14/20231
First meeting: Need to write out a schedule of how I am going to finish my project2/21/20232/21/20231
Need to finish writing out one more section of the script by interviewing a friend for more information.2/17/20232/27/202310
The script should be done by now, next step would be to start transferring the script onto Twine. 2/27/20233/8/202310
Second Meeting: Ideally I should have something to show on Twine already.3/21/20233/21/20231
Spend some time on YouTube to refresh Twine coding. 3/7/20234/5/202328
Code the pathway on Twine (adding branches and text effects)3/8/20234/5/202328
Playtesting 4/5/20234/5/20231
Edit, fix, and add. 4/5/20234/5/20231
Artwork would also be needed, so I’ll have to spend time gathering screenshots & draw artwork. 3/15/20234/19/202335
Music would eventually be needed so I’ll spend some time talking with my music friend and see if we can get some original background music. 3/29/20234/24/202326
Playtesting4/24/20234/24/20231
Edit and fix the game4/24/20234/24/20231
Third meeting: Get final thoughts on the game.  5/3/20235/3/20231
Edit and fix the game4/25/20235/1/20236
Playtesting5/1/20235/8/20237
Final touch up5/1/20235/8/20237
Individual Presentation5/9/20235/9/20231
Individual Presentation5/16/20235/16/20231

Budget: $0

Poster:

Slide show of my Presentation (PDF):

Progress report #1:

My culmination project is making a non-linear adventure game in Twinery.org (aka Twine). So far I have most of the script done and I’m just missing a small part in my story script. My writing consists of real-life events being transferred to my game, so I have to get my friend’s perspectives on their story and how my target audience will react. Otherwise, I have gathered all my materials & script in one area for easier access. I’ve also started typing my script in Twine and I have begun gathering screenshots + drawings I need for specific scenes. I’ll most likely schedule my 2nd meeting with my advisor, Professor Creane next week once I have everything in Twine. By next week, I should have the story laid out with some background images as well.

Progress report #2:

As I continued working on my story-narrative twine game, I had to improvise on the storytelling as I input them in twine as there wasn’t enough agency. I had to also ensure that the fail state error of the player choices doesn’t completely restart their gameplay. Whilst doing this, I also had to figure out a few mechanics like clicking on the screen to continue without needing a button and adding a Harlowe audio library. I managed to implement these functions in my twine game and then I had to figure out the background image sizing as the image zooms in for some reason. Generally, having the background in the cover works but some other background images would need a specific pixel number assigned. 

I’ve met with my culmination advisor, Professor Creane, and received a lot of great feedback. Received feedback of:

  • Being more clear with certain situations in my storyline. (Instead of using somehow this happen, add more details)
  • Make connections with the milk, leading to a fantasy world, and consistency with puzzles
  • Don’t hand out main items for free, make the player feel like they work to get the ingredients 
  • Write out an epic disaster bad ending 

My next step:

  • Implementing feedback
  • Adding variables to the game
  • Creating if/else statements
  • Finish writing out the story
  • Drawing visuals and screenshots
  • Bug fixes

Progress report #3:

With the feedback of Professor Creane, I made my story writing have clearer connections and make the story more consistent. I’ve finished writing out the story and thanks to my friends playtesting the game I found quite a few bugs in my twine game like there was a loop in my game and being unable to move forward. At this stage, I’ve fixed all the problems given to me through playtesting and I’ve uploaded my game on itch.io. I presented my game to Professor Creane through itch.io and received feedback on fixing my grammar. I touched up on my grammar and I would like to say my project is mostly finished, the story is done, there is music, and the programming is there. Most of the background visuals are in the game as well but I am missing a small portion of background visuals which I will continue to fill in after my presentation. 

Project Reflection:

The end result of CakeDream is a completed interactive game that is a fun and enjoyable experience that encourages players to explore their imagination and remember that their choices have consequences. The player has the opportunity to play the game more than once to experience different endings and complete the achievement list. The game will save your progress as long as you don’t exit off the webpage. Although some of the background visuals have not been completed, the game is playable with complete storylines and music implemented. The missing background visuals will continue to be implemented even after my presentation as this is a game we made for our friend as a birthday gift. 

How this project will affect what I do next will be being able to improve future stories by writing more consistent connections between the stories, being quicker at using twine, and making more advanced stories on twine. This project was not done just by myself as well, it was a team effort. I feel like being in a team made project managing one of my duties as I was making this project. This experience will probably change how I do things since I would’ve dived more into game creation, story designing, and story writing. 

Although CakeDream started off with the idea of one target audience, I am happy to have created this game and let other people experience our memories. We started this game as a two-person project, Mep and I on Cloudnovel back in May of 2020. We’re proud to see how far we are going with this project and bringing in our friends to make this project better. I wouldn’t have been able to make this game without the help of my team and friends. We are not done with CakeDream as there is much more artwork to draw and more easter egg story lore to add on! This means there are going to be more interviews with friends and creative writing to connect within CakeDream! More creation of animation and programming in Twine. Then more playtesting to make sure the game is running as it should. 

ENT 3230 – Unity assignment

Created a scene in Unity and change the camera’s skybox for a
solid green color. Added a plane, a cube, a sphere and assign different materials to them. I’ve also added a few cylinders and other objects in the space to see what I can mis and match around.

List 4 Animes that inspires me

  1. Silver spoon

Silver spoon is a wonderful anime where a middle school student decided to move from Toyko city to the countryside to an agriculture high school. Throughout the anime, there were many valuable lessons learned that kept it very entertaining to watch. Like how the main character struggles with the sudden new environment but with the strength and endurance he builds along the way, he gradually learned many valuable lessons. I really wish a 3rd season would come out but since this anime isn’t getting much traffic and attention; it’s unlikely a 3rd season will come out.

2. 22/7

22/7 is a great music anime where a group of girls performs musicals and dances like idol groups. The plot started off with random girls from worldwide meeting each other for the first time and a group was randomly formed by a “god” orders. What makes it a great music anime is the typical plot of the team growing together and going through many obstacles and reaching the climax.

3. My Roommate is a cat

My Roommate is a cat is a fairly cute anime where you see a cat and a human interact. I don’t remember the whole detail about the anime since it’s been fairly long since I’ve watched it. But knowing my genre so far, it’s probably another heartwarming anime where the cat and the human live together and grow to understand each other.

4. Kono Oto Tomare

Kono Oto Tomare is a great anime with beautiful instrument playing music and I love the story plot of the team member growing as a group to perform better together. It’s a mix of beautiful hard work, cooperation, the endurance of everyone in the team that makes this anime tearful and heartwarming.

Week 14 – Self Unity Tutorial

Overview: 

A Unity tutorial that I have decided to pick up upon is 2D animation. Out of all the tutorials I looked into, this stands out to me because I have done animation before but they were all really based on manually editing. So when I found this Unity tutorial, I wanted to see if this was another convenient way of animating. Other reasons will be because I want to improve on my drawing skills and wanting to grasp a little bit more understanding of animation. 

Context:

Throughout the process of this tutorial, I first had to draw a few characters with separate body parts, different layers, and try my best to make it look normal and good. I’m not the best artist but so my aim was towards it looking decent. After I made my first character, I hopped on Unity and started learning how to 2D animate.

I was stumped in the beginning as I have no boundaries, I was just putting my character in a blank space/skybox. So I decided to have a little bit more fun in making a little stage with some 3D assets being imported in. After making the room, it felt more like it. I had a space to work on and boundaries for me to know what my character is there for. 

Then I finally started putting my character in the scene and I learnt a few tricks like using the sprite editor for 2D animations, how to change the pivot points of each part of the body, and keyframing my character. 

After successfully animating my first character, I continued on to adding my second character with a little bit more body parts and I may have started to mess up some coloring & lining on the way so it may be pretty noticeable in some areas in the Unity recording video.

Goal: 

In conclusion, is animating in unity vs animating in editing software like Photoshop, krita, etc much easier? My answer would be yes for me, since I have limited experience in only animating in Krita & photoshop. I say that it was definitely more enjoyable being able to make a 3D room & animating 2D in the same space. It was much quicker and fun. When I first started animating in Krita I didn’t follow a tutorial or anything so that may be one reason why I find this much convenient. 

Timeline: 

April 26 – April 28th: Project given & Found the tutorial 

May 3rd – May 6th: Completed the tutorial & documentation.

May 10th – May 12th: Presentation days

Resources: The 2D Unity Animation tutorial I followed.

Unity recording video: Click here

Week 11 – Agora SDK Demo

Week 11 we worked on a new Unity project with Agora.

Link to Agora SDK tutorial: Click here

First we created an account so we can obtain the App ID.

Next we went into the Unity project and we imported Agora video SDK from the package manager. We experimented around with the size and the scripts so it would work.

Advice for me: Remember to not just copy and paste the code, make sure to leave the mono-behavior public class in. Also, the Agora tutorial doesn’t mention this, but we have to add (using UnityEngine.UI;
using agora_gaming_rtc;) these 2 classes in the scripts. Add in the public class for the Join & Leave button so I can access them in the inspector.

Here is the end result of the Agora tutorial:

Week 9 – Unity project WIP

During week 7, we have been given the museum assignment to chose a room and try to replicated it on Unity. We were working in a team of 2 and my partner is Justin. We chose the room of The halls of Reptiles and Amphibians to replicate on Unity.

Here’s the link to the room: The halls of Reptiles and Amphibians

We split up the work after we came back from spring break and my role is to make the level – the building design/outline.

Here’s the link to the rough sketch of the room before I started making it on Unity: Rough sketch

Here’s a video of the end of the week level product: Unity video

Things I could improve is that I could’ve added post-processing and adding floor texture material in the room. I will definitely add onto this project more in the future even after presentation day. If I do continue on this project, I will update it on Open lab to see future adjustment.

Week 7

Week 6 we talked about AR & VR foundation. I’ve decided to experiment around with AR foundation in Unity. Here’s the mini tutorial for my future self.

AR foundation tutorial:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aLICi_elSM6PuVAUrx_e592rw0ZURzKv/view?usp=sharing

Things to mention (forgot to mention in the video)

  • Within the AR session origin, I added the component of AR image tracking before adding the library & 3D object.

Read & Respond:

Today’s reading is A Manifesto for cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s by Donna Haraway. This reading was about a cyborg that is a hybrid of a machine and a sociable creature. It could be a animal/human. The cyborg is classify as a fiction that represents struggle over life & death. The reason why it struggle so much is because it’s being rejected by many that can’t accept something different than what they usually see. There is a category for everything and the cyborg a hybrid does not belong in any category. This story, the cyborg is to persuade feminist to move on and that categories are not needed to separate things.

Week 4 – mapping

In today’s class, the exercise was to map out what I do daily. Though I don’t water my plant daily, it’s mostly a weekly/bi-weekly activity I do. This is a rough sketch & I had a many more ideas.

Before I started working on my flowchart, this is what I’ve typed out.

Watering my plant (How I water plant)

  • Prepare the mixture
    • Depending on what type of mixture I use I will either use my kelp supplement or the acid-feeding water sollution for my plant
    • Both have the same steps, 2 teaspoons and 1 bottle of water.
  • Bring the pot to the bathroom
  • Slowly pour the water mixture into the pot
    • I prefer to start from the outside towards the inside
  • Do not overflow the water and wait until most of the water seeps into the soil
  • I have a tray for the pot so when the water comes out through the drainage the tray will catch the water.
  • Dump out the water and water the pot again until the bottle is empty
  • Once all water has been flush out, bring it back into the original spot near the window.

Extras step if I feel like it would be to wipe the leaves

  • After watering the plant, I would get a microfabric cloth and wet it with warm water.
  • Then I will carefully wipe the leaves down from the stem towards the leaves.
  • Does the same process to the rest of the leaves top & bottom.

Another step I would do:

  • Bring it back to the original window spot
  • Spray around the plant with my water spray to increase the humidity

If I had more time, I may have map out most of the ideas I first typed out but a simple flowchart will be fine for now.

Week 3

Week 3 worked on a terrain where I added rocks, grass, post process, player controls, and unity recording.

The idea was to have a rock and a single tree from a friend of mine as a joke. I was like sure, I will implement that idea in and play around with it.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing around with the scenes & adding layers of things. It took me a good 8 hours or more making this project. I was watching Professor’s Alecz video and following it step by step. Most of the time I had to pause & make sure I did it correctly or he went just a little bit too fast. I probably could have spent lesser time to do this project because I had distractions at home. Thought those distractions where the motivations I needed to start the project & continue on. It’s easy to get lost in the moment when working on projects but it’s also the start we have to take that takes a while.

The problem I had with unity was my terrain kept clipping whenever I zoomed into the terrain but that was fixed by changing my layout to 2 by 3. Another problem was I couldn’t install the unity recorder but that was because I didn’t update my unity to the latest version. Lastly, I couldn’t figure out how to make the tree leaves flow with the wind unlike the grass on the ground.

In the end, I made a terrain I’m pretty happy with and I’m looking forward to scripting next week.

Video of my terrain(video was too big to import as media here): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BhgjdQRTIWm585FpcpysB2GDl_9kImoV/view?usp=sharing

Here’s a link to a screenshot to the unity layout 2 by 3 in unity: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZHZd-kh_4nyfA8ML0Dk0SLsVUMtQXDH1/view?usp=sharing